Terms & data use

The short version, for a private beta. Last updated July 2026.

The basics

CertForge is a personal, self-hosted study tool, offered free and as-is for a private beta. There's no warranty, and it may change or go offline at any time. The practice content is study material to help you prepare — it isn't affiliated with or endorsed by any certification body.

Your data

To run the app we store your account (email, name), your study activity (answers, scores, sessions), and — when you choose to explain yourself — your written reasoning and the model's critique of it.

Your individual progress is private to your account. Your reasoning and critiques are used in aggregate and anonymized to improve the questions and the grading. We don't sell your data or share it with third parties.

Everything runs on self-hosted hardware; the AI runs locally, not on a cloud provider.

Local models — expect some waiting

The AI that generates questions and grades your reasoning runs entirely on our own hardware, in-house — nothing is sent to a cloud AI provider. That's the point (your data stays here), but it's a trade-off: there's a limited pool of compute. Generating a fresh question or grading your reasoning can take anywhere from a few seconds to a minute, and when several people are studying at once your request may queue behind theirs. If something feels slow, it's usually just working — give it a moment.

Fair use

Use your own account, don't try to break or overload the service, and be reasonable. Accounts that abuse it can be disabled.

Questions? Ask Pat.